


I fell in love and I needed a road map

by Adarian



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, I promise this is fluffy, Lockdown Fic, and angst free considering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25203517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adarian/pseuds/Adarian
Summary: Modern Day AU: Pharmacy clerk Shepard meets Sam when prescription restrictions during lockdown require her to come weekly to pick up her medications. Not being to see the other's face, they pine from afar, until Shepard finally makes a move.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Samantha Traynor
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	I fell in love and I needed a road map

When Shepard was a kid, she didn't have much say in what she got to watch on TV. The reason for this varied based on which of the five foster homes she had lived in. Usually, it was because she was the youngest kid and the older kids had a bigger say in what entertainment everyone else had to live with. The last home, the one she would spent the last half of her teenage years at, had a different issue. Shepard was the only kid but the elderly woman she lived with only liked documentaries and hated anything not actively adding to one's education and understanding of the world. Shepard understood that in concept. She had a vision for her own life since she was twelve and trying to create her own robot from scrap parts. Everything she did in high school was to give herself the best shot she could at her dreams. Shepard studied hard at school and she worked hard - both at her cashier job at the local pharmacy and at her not really legal apprenticeship as a tool and die maker. She understood the value of education, but in her off hours she had just wanted to plop down on the couch and watch something mindless. But there was no budging her foster mother and Shepard's downtime was full of documentaries. The woman had a particular taste for historical disasters - fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, anything like that. 

Because of all this, teenage Shepard had a very specific idea in her head as to what it would look like to live in Unprecedented Times. She would not have imagined twenty year old Shepard spending a quarantine lockdown as a temporary university drop out working triple shifts at a twenty-four hour pharmacy while crashing on her friend's couch. Shepard had been on a co-operative placement in another city when everything shut down. Her room had been sublet at the house she shared with four other engineering students and her subletter wasn't going to move out until lockdown was over. Fair enough, except that Shepard had nowhere to go except Garrus' place. Her friend had barely managed to pay for a one-bedroom with his army reserve stipend but with everything shut down, he was more than happy to have a roommate to help pay the bills. This was also manageable, really. Her and Garrus got along really great, even being mostly cooped up together. 

What was pushing Shepard to her breaking point was work. She liked Doctor Chakwas and she had been happy working at the pharmacy for the last five years. She was one of four cashiers at the front end of the store where she normally served customers who were buying a few over the counter supplies or cosmetics or a few miscellaneous grocery items. As cashier jobs went, it was quite pleasant. Chakwas even let them sit down between customers, something that her fellow cashiers told Shepard would never happen anywhere else. 

Since lockdown, this had changed significantly. Lines were bigger, the people more desperate, and the risk of infection greater. Shifts were longer from sheer necessity. And this was just the front end. The two pharmacy techs were worn ragged within the first week. There wasn't a drug shortage, not yet at least, but the government had limited the amount of medications that could be dispensed at a time. Three month refills because one month refills, meaning three times the work for every patient. At the end of the week, they begged Chakwas to assign one of the cashiers to help out. Chakwas trusted Shepard and voluntold her to do it. So now Shepard was working insane hours and was completely out of her depths. In theory, it was the same. Take payment for items. But there were questions and scared angry people and the constant reassuring. She hadn't signed up for this. No one had, of course, but she had definitely not expected to spend a pandemic working sixty-hour weeks at a till and barely doing laundry.

However, there was one bright point to those long shifts at the pharmacist's counter. She saw the same faces again and again, especially those with multiple prescriptions who had to come back frequently because of the refill limitations. These regulars tended to be much kinder than those with one-off prescriptions. Most of them even said please and thank you, a true miracle in customer service. 

But there was this girl...

Shepard felt silly when she thought about Samantha Traynor. She didn't know her, not really, but it felt like she did. Sam was on a half dozen medications that had been prescribed over the course of her first month in Canada as she switched to using the provincial medical system. This had not been a problem before. One month out of three she just waited until they all lined up and then came in, picked up a new lipstick and eyeliner, and processed her prescriptions all at once.

But now, there were limits so Sam was at the pharmacy at least once a week, lining up two meters apart from everyone else, with her mouth hidden behind one sort of nerdy mask or another. Shepard had seen her full face in her ID, but it still felt like a mystery to her. Sam's eyes were so pretty in person and they crinkled whenever she smiled beneath the fabric. Shepard could only imagine how equally pretty her mouth must be. 

Three months into the lockdown, Shepard felt as if they had become friends. Sort of. They only spoke for about five minutes once a week, usually around eleven at night when the crowd was slower and a quick conversation wouldn't set off someone behind Sam in the line. But Shepard thought about her every day she didn't see her and quite frankly was driving Garrus nuts with her pining. With his birthday coming up, he decided to throw a Zoom party and told Shepard to invite Samantha to come. It was just a party, Sam didn't have to go, and if she did there was going to be like thirty people going off into break out rooms to hang out. It was very, very little pressure. 

Sam wouldn't come in for another five days after Garrus announced his party. Shepard basically sweated through her shirt every shift, waiting nervously for Sam to come in. If she was going to. Maybe she had changed pharmacies, creeped out by Shepard. Maybe she was dead - okay, she probably wasn't dead but it was a pandemic and Shepard had an anxiety disorder and she had the right to jump to the worst-case scenario if she felt like it. 

But finally, Samantha came in for a refill during the early morning, looking like a true trainwreck. It was maybe two in the morning and there was almost no one else in the store. Shepard asked how she was doing but Samantha seemed to not hear this and merely yawned while she shook her head to Shepard's standard scripted line: "Do you have any questions for the pharmacist?" 

At the end of the interaction, Sam seemed to snap out of her daze and immediately apologized, seeming quite flustered.

"I'm sorry," Samantha said. "I've been up all night arguing with my girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend, I suppose. We broke up. Last night. Or this morning. It's hard to think which is the right time zone, back home or here. Either way, I didn't mean to ignore you. I'm fine. I hope you're doing well?" 

Shepard's brain simultaneously rejoiced that her crush was single and that felt awful that she was so delighted. "I'm sorry. That's really rough."

"It wasn't so serious. We had only been dating a few months before I moved here. I should have ended it earlier but I was hoping to do it in person. After awhile, I just realized it wasn't fair to keep her back. Apparently she thought the same thing. She moved in with her ex to wait out the lockdown together and has been sleeping with her for the past three months." 

Shepard winced. "Ouch." 

It was hard to tell Sam's expression. "It's alright. I'm sorry, I shouldn't dump this all on you. It was kind of you to ask."

This made Shepard's mind up for her. She grabbed a pen and wrote her email address on the back of her boss' business card. She slipped it under the plastic shield with Samantha's medications.

"My friend's throwing a virtual birthday party for himself this weekend," Shepard explained. "Nothing exciting, but maybe you'd want to come for a bit. No pressure, obviously, but if you're interested, send me an email and I'll send you the link. But honestly, no pressure."

Samantha replied cheerly, “Maybe. It’d be nice to see your lips.”

Samantha’s eyes widened as she explained herself in a flurry. Shepard couldn’t process what she was saying only because it honestly hadn’t occurred to her that Sam might actually have been interested in her this whole time. 

Samantha left quickly, leaving Shepard to sigh dreamily, shifting to rest her elbows on the counter, her face cupped in her hands. Her daydreaming lasted twenty seconds before Chakwas yelled at her to stop touching her face.

Garrus’ party would turn out to be something of a disaster, which they probably should have guessed considering how terribly slow their internet was. But Sam did come for a little bit and she and Shepard left the Zoom session to go talk on the phone together. Shepard sat outside on her stoop, the early May air still chilly but comfortable enough under her jacket.

They talked until Shepard’s phone died, somewhere around three in the morning. They had been on the phone together for almost five hours and by the end of their call, Shepard felt like Sam understood her better than anyone else on the planet. She thought, in a sleepy dreamy way, that she might be falling in love.

This went on for a few weeks. They’d see each other in person once a week, both embarrassed and sheepish despite Skyping for hours every single night. It felt forbidden, never touching, and yet as if they were strangers once again. Then they’d be on the phone again and that awkwardness faded away. 

They had talked about it at least once a day. What their relationship would look like once the lockdown started to lift. If there were social bubbles, would they want to form one? Who else would be in it? Were they ready for something that serious? 

And yet when the announcement did come, Shepard had no doubts. As soon as her shift was done, she drove over to Sam’s apartment building and climbed the fire escape to avoid the lobby. She found Sam’s door already open and the woman she loved waiting for her.

Shepard broached the six feet they had kept for so long and she swept Samantha into her arms and kissed her. They both laughed and then they cried, holding each other so tightly Shepard was unsure either would ever let go.

But they did. Long enough to stumble over to the couch to make out. And then long enough for Shepard to pack her few things and move in. Maybe it was too fast – okay, it was definitely too fast – but it still felt right. This was where she was supposed to be. No matter how this was all going to play out, she wanted to be with Sam when it did.

About a week about Shepard moved in, the government allowed prescriptions to be dispensed for three month periods again. By that point, it didn’t matter. Shepard was bringing them home for her girlfriend anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> guys, my lockdown brain has allowed for like no creativity, it's amazing I got even this done


End file.
